Privacy and Data Breach

Overview

Hospitals, doctors’ offices, grocery stores, technology companies, even pet stores, everyone is asking consumers for their personal information and collecting it. But these companies are not taking care of the data we provide them. Data breaches abound because many companies do not encrypt and do not adequately protect data, and they keep our data long after they reasonably need to do so. When they fall short of what consumers, applicable law and industry standard practices require and expect, companies should be held accountable for the damage that they cause.

Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, and its attorneys are on the leading edge of data breach and privacy litigation. When we learn that unfair privacy practices or a preventable data breach have harmed consumers, we will file a case and seek justice, no matter how big or how wealthy the company behind these bad practices may be.

In Burlingame, the Privacy Group at CPM is led by Partner Mark Molumphy, who has served as lead counsel in several of the nation’s most prominent privacy cases, including the Yahoo! Litigation, involving two of the largest data breaches in U.S. history, including a 2014 hack impacting 500 million users in 2014, and an even larger hack involving one billion users in 2013. The two attacks involved users’ names, telephone numbers, birth dates, and even encrypted passwords. Molumphy successfully pursued both direct and shareholder derivative claims, deposed Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officers, and ultimately secured a preliminary injunction requiring additional disclosures as well as monetary relief. Molumphy also negotiated a $500 million settlement – the largest all-cash resolution of a computer intrusion case in history – on behalf of a class of approximately 100 million iPhone users in the Apple Device Performance Litigation. The CPM Privacy Group also includes Gia Jung, who adds several years of trial advocacy to her Certificate in IP & Technology Law from Berkeley.

The Data Breach Practice Group at CPM is led by Tom Loeser, a trial attorney with 26 years of experience and the only former federal cyber prosecutor in the plaintiff’s privacy bar. Mr. Loeser’s extensive training and experience in the investigation and prosecution of data breach, hacking and privacy cases has led courts in many of the biggest privacy and data breach cases to appoint him to leadership positions. Team members in Seattle include Karin Swope, a seasoned CPM litigator who has represented individuals and sovereign nations in protecting their intellectual property rights, including before the USPTO. Andrew Fuller, an experienced litigator, and Jacob Alhadeff and Ellen Wen, two recent University of Washington Law School graduates with technology experience who are becoming experts in data breach and privacy protection cases.

If you have received notice that your information was compromised in a data breach or believe that your right to privacy is being violated by a company in the United States, you can submit your information at the link below for a free case evaluation.